United States Department of the InteriorBUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENTMontana State Office5001 Southgate DriveBillings, Montana 59101-4669 http://www.blm.gov/mt

July 18, 2011

1283 (MT932.KB) P

EMAIL TRANSMISSION – 7/19/11

Instruction Memorandum No. MT-2011-063

Expires: 9/30/2012

To: Montana Dakotas Leadership

From: State Director

Subject: Verification of State and Field Office Data Stewards DD: 7/29/11

Program Area: All program areas.

Purpose: The purpose of this Instruction Memorandum (IM) is to request the verification or designation of data stewards for various business and data subject areas within the Montana/Dakotas organization. Attachment 1 lists these data subject areas and the current data stewards.

Individuals identified as data stewards do not have to be senior technical experts; they must, however, have in-depth knowledge of the business data and how it is used. For some business areas, more than one individual may be named.

Policy/Action: Each district, division, and field office will review and update the information (in Attachment 1) confirming, correcting, or assigning a data steward to their respective program or business area. Return the updated spreadsheet to Kevin Brooks, State Data Administrator, via email (kbrooks@blm.gov), by July 29, 2011. If there are missing program or business areas, please add that information, assign a data steward, and forward that as well. Data steward responsibilities are listed below.

Background: Proper data management is essential to meeting the Bureau’s mission. A data steward is a subject matter expert within a specific business subject area who is essential in managing our data resources as a corporate asset as designated by management. A data steward is one who manages facts or information to ensure it can be used to draw conclusions or make decisions. Data stewards are responsible for data requirements, standards, access rules, data quality, and other data activities for their subject area.

A data steward is responsible for:

Creating data standards and business rules.

Coordinating within our organization for quality assurance/quality control processes and procedures.